Magazine Article | June 18, 2014

Payments And Integrations Made Easy

Merchant Link strives to deliver peace of mind for their growing base of VAR partners and their customers by providing enhanced security and support for payments.

What types of products/services do you offer?
Business owners are looking for ways to address the ongoing threat of credit card theft and fraud, as well as reduce their PCI compliance scope and costs. Merchant Link offers leading security solutions such as tokenization and point-to-point encryption to protect payments from swipe to settlement. Properly deployed, implementation of these solutions can remove merchant POS systems from the scope of PCI. In addition, our processor-neutral gateway ensures transactions are delivered to their destination accurately and consistently. Our support service provides expert, round-the-clock assistance to merchants and resellers with issues related to reporting, authorization, and settlement.

What is unique about your channel program?
Over the past 20 years, we’ve built our reputation on customer service, and that extends to our partners. It’s a real differentiator. Our team is committed to going “above and beyond” to make things easy, with handson support during implementation that is ongoing to capitalize on sales opportunities.

Describe the integration process.
Our process begins with the assignment of a dedicated integration analyst to the project. This staff member develops a close working relationship with the partner and is responsive and available to them. Merchant Link provides a step-by-step integration plan and offers options to meet weekly or bi-weekly as needed. Next, we provide specifications and documentation that is comprehensive, clean, and simple. Prospective VARs who have suffered through long and disorganized integrations will often ask, “Once you send your API, are you going to come back with more stuff for us to do?” The answer is no. We respect your time and ours and strive to make the process as efficient and easy as possible.

How long is the integration process?
An integration takes anywhere between two and eight weeks and is primarily determined by the amount of time the developer on the VAR side can dedicate to the project.

What sales and marketing support do you provide?
If a customer has an interest in Merchant Link’s products and services, we are there to support them in every way, whether it’s participating in a conference call or traveling to be on-site for an in-person meeting. The world of credit card payments is complex and constantly changing. Our VAR partners are able to rely on us to serve as the subject matter experts. We are happy to connect directly with their customers to explain how it works and answer any questions. In addition, our marketing department provides strategic and creative support to help create demand, ranging from co-branded collateral, to public relations, to social media and more.

What financing options do you offer partners?
Once established as a certified partner, partners have the option to be a reseller and mark up our solutions, or, they can simply refer their business to Merchant Link, and we take care of the rest with a revenue share option. Contact us for details.